SAN DIEGO (AP)  Marvin L. Goldberger, a former president of the California Institute of Technology and a noted physicist, died Wednesday. He was 92.

Caltech said Goldberger died of cancer in the La Jolla area of San Diego.

Goldberger was Caltech”s president from 1978 to 1987. During that time, Goldberger helped develop the first 10-meter telescope at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii. It is one of the largest optical telescopes in the world.

After leaving Caltech, Goldberger became director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He later was a physics professor at UCLA and UC San Diego.

“The loss of Murph Goldberger is one that affects us deeply here at Caltech, but also reverberates throughout the nation”s scientific leadership and the international physics community,” current Caltech President Thomas F. Rosenbaum said.

Rosenbaum added that Goldberger”s excitement about physics was contagious.

“He held to a vision to push the Institute to new heights of discovery and educational distinction, realized through decisive interventions,” Rosenbaum said.

Goldberger worked on the Manhattan Project and was a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Along with theoretical physicist Sam Bard Treiman, he derived the Goldberger-Treiman relation, which provides a quantitative connection between strong and weak interaction properties of the proton and neutron, according to Caltech. Goldberger was also active in international security and arms-control issues, serving on the Supercollider Site Evaluation Committee of the National Academy of Sciences and Engineering.

He received numerous distinctions for his work, including the Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics.

Goldberger was predeceased by his wife, Mildred Goldberger, and is survived by his sons, Joel and Sam, and grandchildren.